CURSE OF THE A-BOMB: 50 YEARS OF LIES: We must pay up for suffering

IN my training at the University of Edinburgh I was taught by geneticists that no radiation was safe - or for that matter, chemicals - as far as genetic damage was concerned.

Of course, it is true that sometimes for medical cures radiation and chemicals are necessary treatments.

But the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and subjecting army personnel to the hazards of nuclear tests did not involve voluntary acts.

So in the Seventies and Eighties I was completely sympathetic to the campaigning of the British nuclear test veterans and when I became an MP in 1997 several of my constituents approached me with their experience of the tests and also their stories of medical ailments in their families.

Multiple myeloma - a bone cancer - was fairly common among them and it comes as no surprise that a survey showed children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of my constituents might develop blood cancers.

It is often argued by successive governments that the studies by the National Radiological Protection Board ruled out the existence of greater levels of disease in the veterans compared with the population at large.

But epidemiological studies often look at disease over short periods and fail to look at those still alive - concentrating instead on causes of death which are often erroneously recorded.

Radiation causes cancer and genetic disease which pass from one generation to the next. None of the veterans were monitored properly to test the levels of exposure. Most were dangerously close to the bomb blast and to the fall-out. Those are the facts.

It is not good enough for the Government to hide behind statistics when the radiation dosage is not even available for scientists to question.

As the International Agency for Cancer Research in Lyon, France, has stated, governments must look at real evidence, not just evidence from studies.

In the case of the British nuclear veterans, that evidence is there. The veterans are telling the truth and my Government should do the honourable thing and pay up - not just to the veterans but their descendants as well.

That is why I have tabled a Commons motion calling for compensation and an inquiry - and I will be supporting my colleague Siobhan McDonagh when her emergency debate comes before the House.

The evidence is as good as it gets... and the Government is trying to cover it up.

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